Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask Her Majesty's Government how many (1) environmental impact assessments, (2) child rights impact assessments, (3) regulatory impact assessments, and (4) equality impact assessments, have been conducted by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs in each of the last two financial years; and of those, how many have resulted in published assessments.

Defra Group FM Estates has made one environmental impact assessment in the last two years. The environmental impact assessment would have become public during the planning application process.

To date, Defra has not carried out any Child’s Rights Impact Assessment in relation to any of its policies. Defra has not had any cases where the family test has identified impacts on the family in the last two years.

The number of regulatory impact assessments conducted and published by calendar year is provided in the table below.

Regulatory Impacts Assessments are required for all new primary legislation. In line with Government policy IAs for secondary legislation only need to be published where these impacts are above certain thresholds. In 2017, this threshold was increased from £1m to £5m annual net costs to business. Where a full IA is not published an explanatory memorandum explaining why impacts are expected to be below the threshold is published alongside the proposed legislation. Defra IAs are published at DefraLex - http://www.legislation.gov.uk/defralex

Equality impact assessments are included where relevant in the regulatory impact assessments. The number of equality impact assessments to which this applies is not collated centrally and could only be provided at disproportionate cost.